Anthropology as Ethics. T. M. S. (Terry) Evens
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as relations of sacrifice. In the Akedah, Abraham, feeling preemptively bound by God's order, finds it necessary to disregard—to sacrifice—what is owed to all lesser others, including to his own son (and, of course, to Sarah). Derrida's point is that this sacrificial turn of events is not extraordinary but in fact our quotidian condition. For insofar as we fulfill our obligation to any particular other, we are necessarily failing to do so to all the other others. In effect, we exist by virtue of sacrificing others. Such is the very structure of our conduct. Whatever we do in our agential capacity as responsible beings, that is, as humans, we necessarily manage to displace ourselves and/ or others. Derrida's illustrations of this existential condition are impressive (1995: 69):
By preferring my work, simply by giving it my time and attention, by preferring my activity as a citizen or as a professorial and professional philosopher, writing…in a public language, French in my case, I am perhaps fulfilling my duty. But I am sacrificing and betraying at every moment all my other obligations; my obligations to the other others whom I know or don't know, the billions of my fellows (without mentioning the animals that are even more other others than my fellows), my fellows who are dying of starvation or sickness. I betray my fidelity or my obligations to other citizens, to those who don't speak my language and to whom I neither speak nor respond, to each of those who listen or read, and to whom I neither respond nor address myself in the proper manner, that is, in a singular manner (this for the so-called public space to which I sacrifice my so-called private space), thus also to those I love in private, my own, my family, my son, each of whom is the only son I sacrifice to the other, every one being sacrificed to every one else in this land of Moriah that is our habitat every second of every day.
Here Derrida manages to describe how sacrifice characterizes the entirety of our lives. He shows the ineluctable sacrificial nexus between his personal preferences and his obligations to his nation (“citizens”), the international community (“those who don't speak my language”), the creaturely world in general (“the animals that are even more other others than my fellows”), and, indeed, to his own “private” life, his family and each of its members in all of their singularity. A little later he goes on, as follows, to suggest that although it hardly would occur to us to think that the criminally murderous event described by the Akedah is any more than a scriptural account with a theological wallop, in fact not only does it happen in today's world, but we ourselves, simply by virtue of the “smooth functioning” of the social order in which we live, with its pronounced rule of law and moral discourse, organize it on a routine and massive scale (ibid.: 85–86):
The sacrifice of Isaac is an abomination in the eyes of all, and it should continue to be seen for what it is—atrocious, criminal, unforgivable; Kierkegaard insists on that. The ethical point of view must remain valid: Abraham is a murderer. However, is it not true that the spectacle of this murder…is at the same time the most common event in the world? Is it not inscribed in the structure of our existence to the extent of no longer constituting an event? It will be said that it would be most improbable for the sacrifice of Isaac to be repeated in our day; and it certainly seems that way…Things are such that this man [Abraham] would surely be condemned by any civilized society. On the other hand, the smooth functioning of such a society, the monotonous complacency of its discourses on morality, politics, and the law, and the exercise of its rights (whether public, private, national or international), are in no way impaired by the fact that, because of the structure of the laws of the market that society has instituted and controls, because of the mechanisms of external debt and other similar inequities, that same “society” puts to death or (but failing to help someone in distress accounts for only a minor difference) allows to die of hunger and disease tens of millions of children (those neighbors or fellow humans that ethics or the discourse of the rights of man refer to) without any moral or legal tribunal ever being considered competent to judge such a sacrifice, the sacrifice of others to avoid being sacrificed oneself. Not only is it true that such a society participates in this incalculable sacrifice, it actually organizes it. The smooth functioning of its economic, political, and legal affairs, the smooth functioning of its moral discourse and good conscience presupposes the permanent operation of this sacrifice.4
Derrida is most critically concerned in these passages to show that our moral and ethical decisions are never finally justifiable, that at the end of the day we have no way to truly account for our various ‘choices’, all of which somehow involve the sacrifice of others, whoever or whatever they may be, on the altar of still other others. This is the case, as Derrida sees it, whether these choices are well considered or simply lived. In the penultimate chapter of this book, I will return to the vital question of ethical justification. For present purposes, though, what is important about these passages is their effective description of sacrifice as, in Derrida's words, “inscribed in the structure of our existence.” Again, Derrida's stunning assertion that society operates necessarily according to, one might say, a hypocritical oath, whereby “the smooth functioning” of any social order's “moral discourse and good conscience” depends on permanent “incalculable sacrifice [of others],” is for the moment beside the point. The point I wish to make is, rather, this: being human, that is, conducting oneself in a manner that identifies one as human, takes the form of sacrifice. By no means does this mean that all forms of sacrifice (human, animal, vegetable, self, other, etc.) are ethically of equal weight or character; it just means that being human may be described as a sacrificial dynamic.
It is important to be clear that this picture of human existence in terms of sacrifice constitutes a description, not a theory, of that existence. It explains nothing. Instead, it is a way of looking at being human, a way distinguished, in my view (which may or may not be Derrida's), by its overriding prejudice for ethics. That is to say, it is a picture of human existence as, above all, ethics—a discretionary dynamic keyed to the good and bearing principally on the displacement of self and other. Hence, Derrida finds that whatever our preferences, in executing them, we betray all the obligations that they necessarily preempt: in preferring our professional duties, we fail to discharge nonprofessional ones; in preferring our public commitments, we fail to discharge private ones; in preferring our native tongue, we fail to give way to other languages; in preferring our cultural habits, we fail to make room for other cultures. These sacrificed obligations constitute ‘Isaacs’, as it were—sons and daughters all.
Self-Sacrifice and the Question of Responsibility
What is curious about Derrida's discourse here, however, is that it is couched largely in terms of the other, of how the discharge of our duties to the Other and to others displaces or sacrifices our duties to still other others. The ‘self’ is scarcely mentioned by him. Even so, the idea of the self is presupposed throughout his argument; indeed, it seems to serve therein as the blind spot of the eye of one's moral perception. The obligations of which he speaks, whether fulfilled or forgone, are meaningful as obligations only in virtue of self-responsible beings. His point seems to be that, as against the understanding of the usual moralisms, responsibility is fundamentally paradoxical. In Derrida's picture of things, it is impossible for the self to discharge its responsibilities to the other without at the same time being significantly irresponsible. Still, by failing to speak openly in terms of the self, he sidesteps a crucial question in relation to responsibility, namely, the question of self-sacrifice.
Derrida does, though, acknowledge the possibility of self-sacrifice. At one point in his text (1995: 69), after speaking of the sacrificial offering in the Akedah as both Isaac and Abraham, he feels obliged to remark parenthetically, “and it is the sacrifice of both of them, it is the gift of death one makes to the other in putting oneself to death, mortifying oneself in order to make a gift of this death as a sacrificial offering to God.” Yet as we have seen, he basically debates the question of sacrifice in terms of the displacing of others, not of the self. Given that from the perspective of others one's self is also an other (it is so even to oneself, as when one turns one's gaze on oneself), perhaps Derrida means to include the possibility of self-sacrifice under the rubric of the sacrifice of others. In any event, self-sacrifice, while giving life to the other, would entail the irresponsibility of taking life from the other that is the self.
But even if this is the case, Derrida still manages to avoid addressing directly the question of self-sacrifice. It is reasonable to construe the self that is at stake in